Skip to main content

frenchrevision.co.uk

http://www.frenchrevision.co.uk

The frenchrevision.co.uk site has been around a long time as a free resource, but is now a low cost subscription site for students and teachers. It is from an experienced advanced skills school teacher, Mr B.Dyer, and comprises a range of material, some interactive, from entry up to advanced level.

Navigating the site is easy, from a menu bar at the top which categorises resources by level. there is also a Contrôles section which allows pupils to send answers by email for checking.

Mr Dyer says the site is the "ultimate revision site for all things French". For teachers it will "save hundreds of hours of marking and feedback". Mr Dyer knows how to hit the right buttons!

He has put together old Hot Potato material from the free site with new resources using iSpring suite. There is a separate menu of sample activities.

The grammar sample on the Conditional consists of some very clear explanatory notes (good for display, by the way) followed by an interactive task. It's a shame that you have to sign up with your email to access the interactive bit, so I have not reviewed it.

The brief GCSE listening sample is based on a 2013 GCSE listening exam with visual support provided by a Voki-style cartoon video (via iSpring suite, I assume). There is a matching task with instant feedback provided and point score.

The reading sample is from a 2012 Foundation Tier reading with simple questions in English, instantly marked with a point score.

The A-level material is again from past papers, with the listening given a touch of spice by the video.

All exercises are said to work on mobile devices.

Overall, my impression is that students would find it worthwhile to pay the minimal £5 annual subscription to access all the material. The fact that much of the content is from exam papers might make it more attractive. I would have mentioned it to my students, but, to be honest, without enormous enthusiasm - alright for revision, perhaps, but arguably a bit dull for general work.

It would have been nice to see more sample material on the site, though the main menu does give an impression of the range of material available. A school subscription costs £20, by the way.

Navigation is easy, exercises are clear, if not very stimulating (after all, they use exam board material which is always safe and unexciting). I'd be interested to know how the email feedback works - at first glance it seems a clumsy way of getting answers. It is not a very sophisticated site, but with the low subscription model you would not expect it to be.

I would recommend that you have a look and see for yourself.









Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What is the natural order hypothesis?

The natural order hypothesis states that all learners acquire the grammatical structures of a language in roughly the same order. This applies to both first and second language acquisition. This order is not dependent on the ease with which a particular language feature can be taught; in English, some features, such as third-person "-s" ("he runs") are easy to teach in a classroom setting, but are not typically fully acquired until the later stages of language acquisition. The hypothesis was based on morpheme studies by Heidi Dulay and Marina Burt, which found that certain morphemes were predictably learned before others during the course of second language acquisition. The hypothesis was picked up by Stephen Krashen who incorporated it in his very well known input model of second language learning. Furthermore, according to the natural order hypothesis, the order of acquisition remains the same regardless of the teacher's explicit instruction; in other words,
4 comments
Read more

What is skill acquisition theory?

For this post, I am drawing on a section from the excellent book by Rod Ellis and Natsuko Shintani called Exploring Language Pedagogy through Second Language Acquisition Research (Routledge, 2014). Skill acquisition is one of several competing theories of how we learn new languages. It’s a theory based on the idea that skilled behaviour in any area can become routinised and even automatic under certain conditions through repeated pairing of stimuli and responses. When put like that, it looks a bit like the behaviourist view of stimulus-response learning which went out of fashion from the late 1950s. Skill acquisition draws on John Anderson’s ACT theory, which he called a cognitivist stimulus-response theory. ACT stands for Adaptive Control of Thought.  ACT theory distinguishes declarative knowledge (knowledge of facts and concepts, such as the fact that adjectives agree) from procedural knowledge (knowing how to do things in certain situations, such as understand and speak a language).
Post a Comment
Read more

12 principles of second language teaching

This is a short, adapted extract from our book The Language Teacher Toolkit . "We could not possibly recommend a single overall method for second language teaching, but the growing body of research we now have points to certain provisional broad principles which might guide teachers. Canadian professors Patsy Lightbown and Nina Spada (2013), after reviewing a number of studies over the years to see whether it is better to just use meaning-based approaches or to include elements of explicit grammar teaching and practice, conclude: Classroom data from a number of studies offer support for the view that form-focused instruction and corrective feedback provided within the context of communicative and content-based programmes are more effective in promoting second language learning than programmes that are limited to a virtually exclusive emphasis on comprehension. As teachers Gianfranco and I would go along with that general view and would like to suggest our own set of g
2 comments
Read more